Corporate Coup: Amazon, Walmart Caught Running Levi’s Cartel
[A casual conversation, just to pass the time, over a baby-flaying session in an ornate warehouse on some lawless Caribbean island]
JPMorgan Intern/Altar Boy: “Oh Learned One, what is the free market?”
JPMorgan Head of Global Markets/High Priest: “Well, young grasshopper, the free market is Walmart, upon the board of which sits Her Holiness Hillary Clinton, colluding secretly with another multinational corporation, Amazon, that also pays no taxes because their scheming accountants know all the tricks denied to the peasants, in order to rig the price of consumer goods so as to maximize their profits from said consumer goods made by slave-children in Indonesian sweatshops, all while the Department of Commerce looks the other way because the Secretary is promised a lucrative board position himself after his departure from ‘public service.’”
JPMorgan Intern/Altar Boy: “I see, Oh Learned One. Blessed be the free market.”
JPMorgan Head of Global Markets/High Priest: “Blessed be, my boy. Mind your baby before it gets cold.”
JPMorgan Intern/Altar Boy: “Yes, Oh Learned One.”
[hacksaw humming for several moments]
JPMorgan Intern/Altar Boy: “The infant nectar is ready for harvesting, Oh Learned One.”
JPMorgan Head of Global Markets/High Priest: “Fetch me my goblet, my boy.”
Related: WEF Takeover of American Education System Goes Live
America, in 2026, is a free market in the same way a company town with a company store was one — anti-competitive, monopolistic, extractive, even fascistic, one might say.
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
― Benito Mussolini
No blue-haired Marxist college student, if he tried, could hate the free market more than Walmart and Amazon, except maybe Blackrock, as evidenced by only the latest corporate malfeasance brought to light by litigation.
Via LA Times (emphasis added):
“Amazon wanted to sell Levi’s Easy Khaki Classic pants for $29.99, but Walmart had lowered the price, and the giant online retailer had matched it at $25.47 to $26.99.
But Amazon wasn’t happy. It subsequently contacted Levi Strauss, asking the San Francisco apparel company to convince Walmart to raise its price, according to a document filed Monday in a price-fixing case brought against Amazon by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta.
Not only did Walmart raise its price, but a Levi Strauss employee also emailed Amazon, “I’m really hoping we can show this as a proof case so we can resolve issues going forward,” according to the filing.
The exchange over the pricing of the khaki pants is just one example of about a dozen cited in the document, filed in support of a preliminary injunction Bonta is seeking against Amazon to stop alleged price fixing.”
Related: U.S. Corporate Profit Margins Surge to All-Time Apex
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While researching this story and the deep well of corporate malfeasance from which it springs, I came upon this illuminating chart from the fine people at Statista, which plots corporate profits across time highlighting the same perversions of the American “free market.”
In it, you will note a massive uptick, incongruent with the regular pattern of steadily rising profits, between 2020 and 2021.
What, that data anomaly begs the question, was happening in 2020 that would have boosted corporate profits by $1.3 trillion?
What was happening: If you, as a small retailer, didn’t have enough cash to bribe the right people in government making Public Health™ decisions, your small business, which may have operated for generations and served as a staple in the community, got shut down — with a vengeance — and it never reopened.
For COVID safety.
If, however, you were Amazon or Walmart, and Hillary Clinton sat upon your board, you not only got to stay open as an “essential retailer” — you gobbled up all that business denied to your former competition by the state.
Just more of that glorious, sacred, American “free market” in action.
Benjamin Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile (now available in paperback), is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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Bitcoin public address: bc1qvq4hgnx3eu09e0m2kk5uanxnm8ljfmpefwhawv
it's cartels all the way down: your hospital charging $15 for a single tylenol tablet, cable/telco duopolies competing only to provide the least helpful service, useless $200k college degrees.
whatever it is, it is clearly not capitalism.
and what to do with all that excess tax-free income? there's a bunch of dc puppets desperately in need of campaign funds......
Yup. I was having this same debate with myself yesterday - being as I was on my tod, Billy Nomates - whilst I changed the battery on my truck.
Whether one terms it Fascism or National Socialism, all that’s missing is the goosestepping military parade.
Since the Chinese gave up on Communism and went full Full Imperial Fascist, the left has decided to march us down the Fascist road to serfdom, at the end of which is the Road of Bones.
I was also debating Capitalism vs Free Enterprise. If you are a Bolshevik Capitalist like, say, Howard Schultz, you get to crush your competitors and impose Neo Socialsts Dogma, by deploying Excess No-Risk Capital that you don’t personally own (that would be Risk Capital) to destroy local, free enterprise, privately-owned competitors. Then, when you have shat in your own neighborhood so much that you can’t stand the stench or the taxes, you up sticks and move to Florida.
Marx, Lenin, Trotsky & Beria (sounds like a Private Equity firm) managed to do a take-private merger of Fascism, Communism and Capitalism whilst no-one was looking, and sold it to the WEF. With Hillary Clinton on the board.
Love your writing, Ben. Sorry I can’t pay: skint after buying the battery.